5. MadonnaErotica
I think Madonna fell out badly with Deee-Lite because they said that ‘Rescue Me’ was a massive rip-off of ‘Power Of Love’. You can really get a sense of it when you hear them together. From when she started talking on records there was always a bit of a Deee-Lite thing going on for Madonna. She’s always been the sum of her influences. But I will never get over how amazing Erotica sounded, from the first time I heard it. She’s made loads of really amazing albums but that one will never not chime for me. For me, that record at that time cemented her as the ambassador for queer culture. It was when I was coming of age. You realised how brave it was to include the song about AIDS [‘In This Life’] when everything and everyone around her in the mainstream was so beige. For queer men, we lived vicariously through her because visually we couldn’t be celebrated. There was homophobia everywhere around the AIDS crisis. Erotica became our canvas, in a way. I bought the [accompanying] Sex book the day it came out. I had a pre-order at Dillons, the bookstore in Trafalgar Square. I don’t know that I went to buy it at midnight but definitely first thing the next day. It was all such an event. Then Erotica came out the following day and it all heavily informed my world.
